Grace Hamilton turned to hymn
number 10. Deb and Jim played this on Sunday,
and I've been humming it ever since, so I'm gonna sing it.
I Will Arise and Go to Jesus. ? Come ye sinners poor and needy
? ? Weak and wounded, sick and sore ? Jesus ready stands to
save you, full of pity, love, and power. Come ye thirsty, come
and welcome God's free bounty. Glorify true belief. true repentance, every grace
that brings you nigh. Come ye weary, heavy laden, lost
and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you're better,
you will never come at all. Let not conscience make you linger,
nor of fitness fondly dream. All the fitness he requireth
is to feel your of him. Sons we are by God's election
who in Jesus Christ believe by eternal destination Sovereign
grace we now receive. I will arise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms,
in the arms of my dear Savior. Oh, there are ten thousand charms. Hymn number 25, Guide Me, O Thou
Great Jehovah. 25. Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,
pilgrim through this barren land. I am weak, but thou art mighty. Hold me with thy powerful hand. Bread of heaven, bread of heaven,
Feed me till I want no more, feed me till I want no more. Open now the crystal fountain
whence the healing stream doth flow. Let the fire and cloudy
pillar lead me all my journey through. Strong deliverer, strong
deliverer, be thou still my strength and shield. They'll steal my strength and
shield. When I tread the verge of Jordan,
bid my anxious fears subside. Bear me through the swelling
current. Land me safe on Canaan's side. Songs of praises, songs of praises,
I will ever give to thee. I will ever give to thee. If you have your Bibles, turn
to Exodus chapter 2. I'm going to read verses 1 through
10. I'm going to read them in conjunction
with the last verse of chapter 1. Exodus chapter 1 and verse
22 says, And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every
son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter
ye shall save alive. And there went a man of the house
of Levi, and took a wife, a daughter of Levi, And the woman conceived
and bare a son, and when she saw him, that he was a goodly
child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer
hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes and daubed it
with slime and with pitch and put the child therein, and she
laid it in the flags by the river bank. And his sister stood afar
off to wit what would be done to him. The daughter of Pharaoh,
came down to wash herself at the river, and her maidens walked
along by the riverside, and when she saw the ark among the flags
she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she
saw the child, and behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion
on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children. Then
said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call
thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child
for thee? Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go. The maid went
and called the child's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her,
take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give thee
thy wages. And the woman took the child
and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him to
Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She called his name
Moses. And she said, because I drew
him out of the water. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, to bless you and thank you for
great grace for ruined and wretched sinners who are without hope
and without help in this world, who can find nothing in themselves
that would recommend them to you. We thank you that the Lord Jesus
Christ, our great and mighty Savior, came into this world,
took on the likeness of sinful flesh, being found in the fashion of
a man he became obedient even to the death of the cross whereby
he redeemed those that you had chosen from the foundation of
the world became their righteousness and
made them accepted before thee all because of his blood and
his righteousness all because of his death we can dare to approach
your throne boldly to speak to you concerning our
needs for this time we know you know them before we pray you
know what we ought to pray before we pray and we say as many have
said before Lord forgive me for what I'm about to say we thank
you for the gift of prayer we can commune with you help us
Lord worship you, and love you. Fix our minds and hearts upon
the truth of the gospel. For those who are sick and away
from us, we ask Lord to be with them and watch over them and
bring them safely back. Pray for ourselves tonight that
you'd warm our hearts to the gospel of Christ. Fix our hearts
and minds upon Him who is worthy of all praise and honor and glory. Let us not glory in the flesh
but only in this, that we know Thee, the true and living God,
the Redeemer of sinful men. Help us, Lord, now we pray in
Christ's name. Amen. Now this is the account of Moses'
salvation from the command of the king to put all Hebrew boys
born down into the Nile to drown them. Now this edict was instituted
because his first command was thwarted by the Hebrew midwives
who refused to slay the children or the boys at birth. They refused
to follow the king's command because they feared God. That's
what it says in chapter 1 in verse 17. It says, But the midwives
feared God and did not, as the king of Egypt commanded them,
but saved the men children alive. Our Lord said in Matthew chapter
28 in verse 10, or excuse me, chapter 10 and
verse 28, he says, Fear not them which kill the body, but are
not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him that is able
to destroy both body and soul in hell. These women feared God
so they wouldn't slay these boys and so the king came up with
another plan. Just cast every child, every
boy child that's born of the Hebrews into the Nile to drown
them. Almost everyone that has a cursory knowledge of Scripture
is familiar with this historical account of Moses. Those who are
made aware of God's sovereignty know that this incident is the
divine act of providential purpose. It is God once again manipulating
times and minds of men and women and all His creatures to bring
about another Hebrew to stand in high regard among the Egyptian
enemies. to even be made a son, as it
were, adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. The Lord has raised up another
Savior, raised up Noah, raised up Joseph. Now he raises up this
child, Moses, in time. This baby will cover this book
all the way through Deuteronomy. This baby will take this people
from Egypt to the very edge of the Promised Land, and He will
serve His appointed purpose to the nth degree. And then God,
in His grace, Moses being a picture of the Law, a representative
of the Law, so much so that throughout the Scriptures it is often called
Moses' Law rather than the Law of God, He will not enter the
Promised Land. He cannot. The law cannot take
you into the promised land. The law may be able to lead you
up to the edge of it and see over Jordan where the promised
land is, but you're going to need Joshua. You're going to
need Jesus to take you into the promised land. When this child
was born, there is no record of him being given a name. When
he was born, he had an older brother and sister who you're
familiar with, Aaron, who was the first high priest in the
line of Levi. And Miriam, who often got herself
in trouble and ended up being a leper till the day she died,
this one was born with a death warrant against him and was hid
for three months. And at the end of three months,
a tiny vessel was assembled by his mother, an ark made of bulrushes
and covered with slime or pitch, which is tar, to make it watertight
so it would float in the river. If you look at the word pitch
in scripture, it is the same word as the word atonement or
covering. The first time it is used is
when Noah pitched the ark within and without. It is an atonement,
an atonement, a covering. That is what atonement means,
to cover. The ark with the child inside was a vessel of mercy.
And it was placed in an isle upstream from where the king's
daughter bathed. And Miriam, the baby's sister,
stood watch as the little vessel drifted on the predestinated
course to the heart and arms of the pharaoh's daughter. Miriam
watched to see what would be done to the infant. They did
not cast their bread upon the waters with the fatal blind faith
they were trusting God. That makes it as clearly set
forth as they are said to be examples of faith in Hebrews
chapter 11. In verse 23 it says, By faith Moses,
when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because
they saw he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the
king's commandment. They sent this boy into this
water by faith, believing that God would take care of him. And
here it is said that they did what they did because they did
not fear the king's commandment. They did not fear because they
knew God was greater than kings and greater than men and that
God knew the king's words while they were yet still in his tongue
and they would have no value whatsoever. As the king's daughter
bathed, she saw the ark and sent her maid to fetch it. And when
the lid was opened, she saw the child, and the child began to
cry. I'm sure this touched her maternal instinct. She was not
a mother. In fact, historians say she was barren. She was married. Pharaoh's daughter was, but she
was barren. And like most women, they won't have babies. And she
didn't have a baby, so when she heard this baby cry, it touched
her heart. The king's daughter had compassion on the child,
it's said, and she identified him as a Hebrew child. and probably
sought to have him fed because he was crying. How did she know
it was a Hebrew child? I don't know. Could have been
that he was circumcised. Maybe he was naked in that little
vessel. We don't know. Maybe it was because
he was fair. Maybe it was because he was handsome
and beautiful. The Hebrew children and Hebrew
women and men both were noted for their being handsome people.
The natural end or the natural inclination of a woman when she
hears a child cry is to feed the kid to feed the kid some
historians including Josephus wrote that the king's daughter
tried many Egyptian wet nurses to feed the child to no avail
as it is not recorded in scripture that may or may not be true but
it would not be unreasonable for a woman to want to take care
of a crying child by seeing that it's fed It seems valid because
Miriam seems to distinguish a Hebrew wet nurse. She said, we can get
a Hebrew wet nurse for it. So it may have been that she's
tried other Egyptians and it didn't work. So we can get a
Hebrew to do it. And that's what happened. The king's daughter
agrees and Miriam gets the child's own mother to be his nurse. This would work well because
the child had nursed at his mother's breast for three months already.
He had heard the sound of his mother's heartbeat and knew her
scent and the sound of her voice. And the king's daughter actually
hired her, hired his mother to nurse him. She said, I'll pay
your wages. That's what she said in verse
9. The father's daughter said, take this child away and nurse
it for me and I'll give thee thy wages. So she's going to
pay the mother to nurse the child. Providence is indeed a wonderful
and a marvelous thing. And after the child was weaned,
probably at two or three years of age, he was brought to the
king's daughter and was adopted. He was adopted. Becoming a member
of Pharaoh's palace, he was given the name Moses, which means drawn
out, because he was drawn out of the water. It's a wonderful
story. And therein lies the gospel of
the Lord Jesus Christ. deliverance is the story of every
sinner saved by grace. The command of the king was that
every son born of that elect Hebrew nation was to be cast
into the Nile to die. They all were born under the,
every son among the Hebrews was born under the death sentence.
and such is the legal state of every one of the elect as soon
as they are born. They come forth from the womb.
Scripture says speaking lies. Even though they have not sinned
after the similitude of Adam's transgression, death is their
sentence because of Adam's transgression. That's what it says in Romans
chapter 5 when it talks about sin and death and the entrance
of it into humanity and society. in Romans chapter five and verse
twelve it says wherefore as by one man sin entered into the
world and death by sin and so death passed upon all men for
all have sinned but actually that is a weak translation those
last four or five words you read in whom all sinned in whom all
sin For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not
imputed where there is no law. Nevertheless, there must have
been a law, because death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over
them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression,
who was a figure of him who is to come, because he stood as
a representative of those that came from his loins. Now, the
instrument of death in our text is the Nile River. It's the Nile
River. Our Lord said, The soul that
sinneth, it shall die. It shall die. That's the Lord's
command. Scripture says that light is
coming to the world, and men love darkness more than light,
and he that believeth not is condemned already. Already, because
he has not believed on the only Son of God. Those who are saved
by grace are declared to be what in Ephesians chapter 2 before
it said they are quickened together by God's grace? They are said
to be dead in trespasses and sin. And death is the favored
arena of Satan. He loves to operate in that and
cause people to have dread and fear of it. In Hebrews chapter
2 when it talks about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ into
this world Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 14
it says for as much then as the children are partakers of flesh
and blood Christ also likewise took part of the same that through
death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is
the devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all
their lifetime subject to bondage they were delivered by Jesus
Christ because he by his death put death out of business the
last enemy to be destroyed is death death and our Lord did
it. And the instrument of death in
our text is simple. How are these boys going to die?
They're going to be put in that Nile River. Put in that Nile
River. That river was synonymous with
death. That river was death. It was
death. How was Moses saved? He was put in the river. That's
how he was saved. Now the river is death. Cast
every son into that river. So what do they do? They cast
him in that river. He was put into death. He was
put into death. This is how the elect are saved.
This is how you and I are saved. We are put into death. The death
of the sovereign effectual substitute. When Christ died for the sheep,
His elect, they were in Him. They were in Him, having been
put in Him by the Father before the foundation of the world.
Read Ephesians chapter 1 and underline the times it speaks
of in Christ. Being in Christ. Forgiven in
Christ. Accepted in Christ. Chosen in
Christ. Predestinated in Christ. Loved
in Christ. Graced in Christ. All of it is
in Christ. We were put in Christ. Of Christ
are you. Of God are you in Christ. Who
of God is made unto us. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. The ordinance of baptism. is
a declaration that the believer was in Christ when He died, when
He died, and He died the death that they owed God and they were
in Him and He died. Where were they? They were in
death! They were put in the Nile! They were put in the Nile! In
Romans chapter 6 when it talks about baptism, The King James Version puts it
in the present tense, but it is actually in the past tense
when we read these words concerning that. In verse 3 of chapter 6
of Romans it says, Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ were baptized unto his death? Therefore we
are buried with him, or we have been buried with him by baptism
into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by
the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness
of life. For if we were planted together
in the likeness of death, we shall also be in the likeness
of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified
with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, and henceforth
we should not serve sin. For he that died is freed from
sin." Is freed from sin. Saw the other day that a man
whom they had found was guilty of several murders. found out
that he had died several years before. I was watching the people
who were angry that he had no justice that we weren't able
to take him to trial and get it done but you see the law can't
touch you if you're dead. It can't do a thing to you if
you're dead and sin can't do anything to you if you're dead
and that's what our Lord says. If we be dead with Christ we
believe that we shall also live with him, or if we died with
him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no
more, death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died,
he died to sin once, but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Likewise reckon, consider it to be so in your case, reckon
ye also yourself to have died indeed unto sin, but be alive
unto God through Jesus Christ. Therefore let sin no more reign
in your body. We go into baptism, you know,
it's not just getting dunked in the water to have some kind
of spiritual feeling because there's nothing about baptism
except it's a confession that when Christ died, we died. We
were in Him when He died. And when He was buried, we were
buried. So we go up under the water.
And when He arose, we arose. So we're taken out of the water.
That's a picture of us dying when Jesus Christ died. The believer
is both dead and alive in Jesus Christ. at the same time he's
both dead and alive, just as he's on the earth and in heavenly
places in Christ at the same time. In Colossians chapter 3,
this is how it's worded. He said, If ye be then, or in
the word there is Greek kai, k-a-i, it means since ye then
be risen with Christ, since you've risen from the dead with him,
quickened together with him, seek those things which are above,
where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God having purged our
sins he sat down at the right hand of the Father according
to Hebrews 1 set your affection or your mind or your love or
your intent or your motivation on things above and not on things
of the earth for you are what? dead you are dead and your life
is hid with Christ in God where is it hid? it's hid in that little
vessel covered with pitch under the atonement that's where it's
hid your life is hid with Christ in God who is our life when Christ
who is our life shall appear then also we shall also appear
with him in glory Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20 it says I am crucified
with Christ nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ liveth in
me in the life that now I live I live by the faith of the Son
of God who loved me and gave himself for me Like Moses of
old, the elect were put into death to save them. Moses was put into death, into
the Nile to save him. Moses was put in an ark pitched
within and without. The atonement was his protection
from the death he floated upon. He wasn't saved from going in
that river. He was in that river. Just like
Noah wasn't saved from the flood, he was IN the flood. He was floating
ON the flood. He was RIDING OUT the flood.
The judgment of God was poured down upon that ark, but he was
saved because he was inside and it was pitched within and without
with the atonement of God. He was safe under the atonement.
He was safe. And so is Moses. Death was all
around him. Splashing against the vessel
in which he abode, but it could not touch him because he was
safe in the ark. That ark was a picture of the atonement made
by Christ. Death cannot touch those who
are in Christ in the ark of the atonement. In matter of fact,
Moses was under the law of the king and by virtue of what his
mother did, he obeyed that command. He obeyed that command. You see,
the law must be obeyed. It's the law. You remember when
Daniel was put in the lion's den? Why was he put in the lion's
den? Because one of the king's men came up to him and said,
you know, I want to make a law that if they don't confess that
you're like God, that what you say is absolute, people ought
to be put in jail. He said, that sounds like a good
law. I'll make that law. So he made that law. If they don't
do it, they need to be put in the lion's den. He said, that
sounds good to me. The king said, I'll make that law. And he made
that law. But Daniel was his friend. And he loved Daniel. But when it came to it, that
sneaky fellow said, Daniel's blaspheming against that law,
you may. And the king said, well, he's got to go to the lion's
den there. It's the law. It's got to be honored. Got to
be satisfied, so they cast him in the lion's den, but the Lord
protected him. The law is, and this is the law
of the land. We live in a land of laws. Here
lately, I'm beginning to wonder about these laws. Not the effectiveness
of whether or not people even think they're really laws anymore.
It's kind of weird what's going on. But a law has to be satisfied
in order, if it's really a law. King, it said, cast the boys
in the Nile. His mother did not fear the King's
command because she obeyed it. The command was to cast the son
into the river. Now the result would be that
they would die, but that was not the command. The result was
that they would drown if the command was obeyed. But the command
was cast the boys in the river. That's what it said. That's all
it said. When he's born, cast him into the river. The letter
of the law was to cast the sun into the river, and that is what
they did. They obeyed the king's command.
Why fear the command if you are going to obey the command? They
obeyed the command. They did just that. The letter
of the law was obeyed. It was obeyed to the letter.
A believer obeyed the law to the letter by someone else obeying
the law for him, just like Moses' mother obeyed the law for him.
required death for our sins, and our sins were made to meet
on Christ. When that took place, our Lord died, the death required,
the law and justice were satisfied for us. And so there is therefore
now no condemnation to them that are in Christ who walk after
the flesh and not the spirit. For the law of life in Christ
Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death. And the
righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us. Why? Because in Christ
we obeyed it. the law said sinner you die Christ
said I'll die for them I'll give the death that they are due the
law was obeyed to what? to death now what it says in
Philippians chapter 2 found in the fashion of man he was obedient
even unto death the death of the cross finally Moses name
being drawn out What does our Lord say to men? John chapter
6, he says, All that the Father giveth me shall come to me, and
him that cometh to me I will no wise cast out. Then he goes
on to say, No man can come unto me except the Father. Draw him. Draw him out. How is that done? All they that
are taught of the Father come to the Lord Jesus Christ. That
is how they are drawn out. This is the Gospel according
to the deliverance of Moses, the man-child who was put into
death just like every one of God's elect. Father, bless us
to understand who prayed in Christ's name. Amen.